C. Howard Co.

While many mints these days are touting how strong they are or that they’re sugar free, the Choward’s line just plugs away at the same mildly-flavored line. They’re not easy to find, so when I spotted these at the Albanese Candy Factory Outlet, I grabbed both the Choward’s Spearmint and Lemon. They have classic textured foil wrappers and list that there are 15 mints in the package.

Choward’s Spearmint are plain white, the ingredients list no colorings. The little squares are are nicely formed. They’re about 2/3 of an inch square and have an excellent embossed Choward’s logo across the center on both sides. They stack easily and have a pleasant texture of unglazed fine bone china.

The spearmint is completely mild. It’s sweet ... much sweeter than I expected. Since they’re made with actual sugar instead of dextrose, it’s noticeable. (Dextrose or glucose is said to have only 74% of the sweetness of sucrose.) Since it’s not very minty, it’s hard to pay attention to anything but the sweetness. But I suppose maybe it’s a good deal - you get more sweetness for the same number of calories.

I found them fun to eat, but really not much for a long-lasting minty freshness. As a breath freshener, well, they didn’t make things worse. Just a little sweet pick-me-up. I can see them going well with mild drinks like tea.

The Choward’s Lemon is a bit more of a curiosity. The ingredients are interesting in that the flavoring is just oil of lemon and citric acid (for tartness). I was expecting a bit of a lemon mint, instead it’s kind of like a SweeTart.

The crunch is smooth and hard and like the Spearmint, it’s quite sweet. But the citric acid gives it a little sour kick. The lemon oil is zesty and certainly more complex than SweeTarts. They less grainy texture took a little getting used to. Ultimately they were just too sweet for a sour chalky candy (I guess that’s why I like the dextrose-based ones) but I liked the texture quite a bit.

The first new Choward’s flavor that I can remember in my lifetime is Guava. Introduced earlier this year it joins the current line up of flavors of square compressed sugar mints that come in Peppermint, Spearmint, Lemon and Violet.

This new version is called simply Tropical Candy. It’s not a mint at all, more of a little treat with no breath freshening powers.

The package is the same weird salmon pink of guava flesh and mid-fifties tiled bathrooms.

Chowards are not your ordinary mints. They’re exquisitely made to exacting tolerances. Build a house for your Lego mini-fig out of Altoids? Never! But these little squares are smooth and perfect with straight sides, consistent colors and crisply chiseled logos.

The best thing about them, as far as I’m concerned, is their stack-ability. They’re stable. Dependable. The same on both sides.

I’m not a guava fan. If it’s in a fruit salad, I pick around it. I’m not even keen on the musky flavor it imparts by proximity. So I wasn’t really looking forward to these.

They smell tropical, like pineapple and orange blossoms. Or a Tommy Bahama store.

They’re tangy and fruity, the flavor is a mix of melon and pineapple for those who have never had guava before. For those who have had guava, it’s authentic enough though a bit more tart.

The texture is smooth. Since they’re made with sugar and not dextrose they have a very sweet note to them with a strong honey-fruity finish.

On the whole, they’re better than I expected and they’re certainly different from other candies on the market (as are all of Choward’s offerings). They’re not minty but still leave my mouth feeling fresh (like a tropical green iced tea will); they’re not quite tangy and flavorful enough to compete with SweeTarts.

I have a vague recollection of some dolls that were popular back in the late sixties/early seventies called Kiddles. They were little dolls with insanely huge heads and long, stylable hair that smelled of violets. To this day the scent of violet makes me think of those dolls. I never owned any (I think my friend down the street, Lisa did though) but I can recall wanting them badly.

Anyway, my stepmother sent these to me a couple of weeks ago and they went into my pile of chocolates, until I took out a candy bar and it tasted like violets. So I sequestered the invasive violets in three layers of paper bags (and promptly forgot about it because it was jammed in three paper bags and looked like trash). Then I came back to the office after the weekend and it smelled like violets, “Oh, I forgot all about them!” Well, now I’ve photographed them and chewed them up and can speak knowlegably about them. I did a little digging to find out more about Choward’s, you can read the history here.

First, I preface this review (actually, it looks like I’ve prefaced the review several times, would you like to just skip to the bottom for the rating?) with the fact that I love herbal/floral flavors. My favorite ice cream flavor at the moment is Orange Blossom and Pistachio. However, probably from the above association with those damn little dolls, I just can’t get behind the little violet mints.

The mints themselves really aren’t terribly flavorful. They’re sweet and very hard (like a piece of soft shale) are the color of the putty I used to caulk my shower and smell like something I might use in the shower while I’m there. They don’t really dissolve so much as just slowly deteriorate in your mouth. As a touchstone though, I found the peppermint version of Choward’s pretty good, like a dense pillow butter mint. I don’t know why the violet texture was so much more, um, sturdy, but it wasn’t really appealing.

The gum, however, is pretty cool. The color, let’s face it, is something you just wanna string up on a necklace or something. The flavor is not at all like the mint, it’s got a nice cinnamon/clove twang to it and a little touch of the flowery violet. The chew is a little sticky and not at all like a chicklet, lacking that burst of sugar and cooling mint. Even after spitting out the gum after chewing for about ten minutes, it scented my breath wonderfully for a two hour meeting.

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